babotika - you are absolutely right in many respects. BA pilots are well trained and the career path is more obvious than at EZY.
However, whilst many of it's pilots fly light aircraft in their spare time, BA as a company does not support GA and (unlike Lufthansa) they have forgotten their original cadet training roots to adopt the CTC/ARL/£84k upfront version.
From AOPA:
"The United Kingdom’s flight training industry has held a crisis meeting to debate whether it has a viable future and has formed a working group with AOPA representation to establish whether it can combat the regulatory and cost pressures that are dragging it down. The meeting, attended by the major players in the commercial flight training industry as well as airlines and pilot organisations, heard that a would-be airline pilot must find up to £130,000 (€155,000) for an integrated training course including type rating, regulatory fees and finance costs before being able to apply for a job, with no guarantee of getting one. Student numbers are dwindling and quality is falling as only the richest can contemplate becoming pilots.
Unlike some other European countries, Britain does not allow any tax breaks on self-funded aviation training and charges students tens of thousands of euros in VAT. Costs cannot be written off during employment. Moreover, British airlines have little or no involvement in training; where Lufthansa, for example, trains several hundred pilots a year, British Airways’ approach is entirely parasitical – it only poaches qualified pilots from other airlines.
The crisis comes as British airlines are mounting a new campaign to have more regulatory costs heaped on general aviation and the training industry. British Airways, among others, is demanding that the UK CAA start charging general aviation for the use of the air, even in the Open FIR, in order to reduce its own charges. BA says: “We believe it is disingenuous for the CAA to suggest that commercial aviation should be forced to pay for the poor practice of GA pilots, i.e. improving the safety of controlled airspace due to GA pilots not installing, or not switching on, transponders. There is an equal obligation on GA pilots to maintain a high level of safety, the achievement of which is, to a large extent, within their gift. Whilst the CAA has identified that they see policy and practical difficulties in moving to charge GA for the services they receive British Airways is of opinion that this problem is potentially easy to solve with the introduction of an annual payment for all registered aircraft, that covers the costs of the services and prevents flying without radio, without met data and other information as the option is pay or don’t fly.”
IAOPA points out, however, that every GA pilot pays more fuel tax than the whole of British Airways, a massive de facto subsidy which makes a mockery of BA’s claim to be hard done by.
The flight training organisations believe that asking the UK government to match the tax practices of other countries is a lost cause, so it must convince the airlines that they can profit by involving themselves in flight training. The main difficulty was seen as trying to talk to airlines about what they’d need two years down the line when they were concentrating on staying afloat for the next two hours. But with the training industry continuing to contract, doing nothing is not an option."